As the murder trial of George Ruibal in the 2007 death of his girlfriend entered its second week Tuesday, a former Boulder County Jail inmate who shared a cell with the defendant testified that Ruibal confessed to strangling Dana Pechin.

Justin Ganoe shared a cell with Ruibal, 58, in the Boulder County Jail after Ruibal was arrested in April 2011 for the 2007 murder of Pechin in Longmont.

Ganoe -- who was in custody on a theft case -- testified that Ruibal started opening up to him, and, after initially denying his role in the murder, later confessed to strangling Pechin.

Ganoe said Ruibal told him he was upset with Pechin over her drinking habits and suspected she was cheating on him, calling her "ungrateful." Ganoe added that Ruibal seemed "remorseful" about the murder and kept referring to Pechin as "my baby."

Defense attorney Eric Klein in cross-examination noted that local newspapers -- which are available for inmates at the Boulder County Jail -- gave details of Pechin's death, though Ganoe said he never saw the articles.

Klein also brought up Ganoe's extensive criminal history, which includes numerous convictions for theft, forgery and fraud in Colorado and California. Ganoe, who is currently on parole and has a pending criminal case in Denver, did acknowledge that he hoped to use the information from Ruibal to help his own pending case in 2011.

"Here he was talking about all the horrible things he had done, so I saw an opportunity to get my freedom back if I helped the district attorney," Ganoe said.

But prosecutors Ganoe both said that Ganoe never received any help from the DA's office on his case.

Ruibal and Pechin lived together in an apartment in the 300 block of 15th Avenue in Longmont in 2007 when Ruibal called police to report that he and a co-worker who had given him a ride home found Pechin dead under a blanket on the couch.

Her injuries were so severe that police initially suspected she had been in an automobile accident. But about a month after she died, the Boulder County coroner ruled Pechin's death a homicide and determined her cause of death to be a closed head injury associated with manual strangulation.

The jury on Tuesday also saw videotapes of Ruibal talking with detectives in 2007. In the video, Ruibal tells the detectives that Pechin had gone shopping and suffered the injury elsewhere before returning to the apartment.

But Michael Arnall -- a forensic pathologist who examined the autopsy report from former Boulder County Coroner John Meyer -- said the severity of the injuries to Pechin's brain likely meant she would have lost consciousness.

"Its difficult for me to believe a person with a brain contusion had the presence of mind to pick up their belongings and move on," Arnall testified. "I suppose it's possible, just hard to believe."

Arnall also said the injuries were not consistent with a fall, and that the type of injuries indicated the assailant had an emotional attachment to Pechin.

The trial is scheduled to continue today with more witnesses for the prosecution.

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